MADRID – The number of housing starts in 2008 fell 41.5 percent compared to 2007, while 43.5 percent fewer mortgages were created in January than in the same month the year before, figures that confirm the depth of the real estate crisis in Spain.
The fall in the number of housing starts, which totaled 360,044 last year, was the result of the adjustment in production of new homes to the fact that sales had fallen by almost one-third.
Meanwhile, mortgages created on homes in January fell to 53,017, and the amount of money loaned in those transactions totaled 6.47 billion euros ($8.8 billion), which is a year-to-year decline of 51.7 percent.
According to the National Statistics Institute, the average value of mortgages written on homes fell for the 12th consecutive month, reaching 122,091 euros ($166,000) in January, 14.5 percent below the average value in January 2008.
